


not sure how to stop

by words-writ-in-starlight (Gunmetal_Crown)



Series: a softer animorphs [7]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Andalites, Ax and Elfangor feelings, Brotherly Affection, Canon Compliant, Culture Shock, Gen, Humanity is infectious, spoilers for tobias' family, that tag is especially for you meghan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-22 16:49:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11384331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gunmetal_Crown/pseuds/words-writ-in-starlight
Summary: CAN’T STOP WON’T STOP NOT SURE HOW TO STOP (WHY STOP)Ax's considerations on Elfangor and the slow inevitable infection of humanity.





	not sure how to stop

**Author's Note:**

> GUESS WHO'S POSTING ON TIME, THIS MOTHERFUCKER.
> 
> Anyway, I have [a whole tag on my blog](http://words-writ-in-starlight.tumblr.com/tagged/human-aliens) about how humans are weird and this fic is the result.

Here is a thing Aximili has never told Tobias: he’s desperately relieved that they didn’t know the secret of Tobias’ heritage earlier. 

It’s not lack of affection for Tobias.  Neither of them quite know how to approach the new question of _family_ —Aximili suspects that Tobias simply doesn’t know how to have family, end of statement—but that doesn’t particularly matter.  Even before, listening to Tobias complain cheerfully about Aximili’s taste in human entertainment and call him _Ax-man_ was soothing, like feeling his brother’s hand on his shoulder, an easily outstretched offer of companionship, of _belonging_ , something in terribly small supply on Earth.  If there was a single creature in all the universe Aximili would be gladder to have as family, he hasn’t met them yet.

No, Aximili wonders if he would have known how fortunate he was to have Tobias, if he had learned about their connection shortly after his arrival, if Tobias had even found Elfangor’s _hirac delest_ before they’d found the ruined Dome of the _GalaxyTree_.  He might have thought Elfangor insane, to have stranded himself on Earth, or rejected Tobias in outright disgust.  Aximili tries not to think about it too much.

Humans are strange, is the thing.  Aximili is better versed in alien culture than any of his friends, although they retain an astonishing amount of data from his comments, but he doesn’t think any of his companions really understand how _absolutely bizarre_ humanity is, on a galactic scale.

Humans have no sense of self-preservation.  Or, well, not quite.  Humans, collectively, have quite a good sense of self-preservation.  _A_ human, individually, tends to view self-preservation with a particularly careless eye—inclined toward survival, certainly, but almost disinterested in their condition.  To the very best of Aximili’s knowledge, there is no other sentient species willing to cut off a limb in order to survive an altercation.  Also, he has never heard of another species, sentient or otherwise, that believes plummeting unaided from lethal heights, with only a thin expanse of fabric to save them, is good fun. 

The first time Aximili hears himself suggest a plan that makes Marco go respectfully silent, almost appalled, he has to take a moment and wonder when he became so much like this dangerous species.

Is this what happened to Elfangor?  Like an infection, something insidious and all-consuming. 

It happens fast, to Aximili.  He starts thinking of himself as _Ax_ , starts looking at combat with an eye toward ultimate victory rather than personal victory.  He watches as all six of them lose eyes, legs, organs, and demorph, take a deep breath, and remorph.  Morphing is an art form at home, something not suited for battle, but not so here—Earth, as the others have pointed out more than once, is a tough neighborhood.  There is no clarity here, no easy command and response, there is no honorable death.  There are good deaths, Rachel tells him sharply when he asks.  But they are still deaths.  Better to live by cheating than to die well, better to fight tomorrow than be remembered as a hero.  And then she turns around and takes on four Hork-Bajir in order to buy Cassie the time she needs to run, to demorph and come back, and shrugs off thanks without a thought.  It must be easy, for someone like Rachel, to dismiss heroism as nothing to work toward, or so he has thought more than once.

He is, he admits to himself eventually, afraid of them.  Humans are wild and uncontrolled and warlike, driven by some pure flame of determination that Andalites, though he hates to admit it, may not be able to match.  Andalites believe in taking the lesser of two evils.  Humans believe in bludgeoning the universe with their will until a third option presents itself.

Ax is afraid of humanity, but in the same way he is afraid of space—it is vast and terrible and he wants to see it up close and infinitely.  He was always looking up at the stars as a child, and Elfangor always laughed at him, when he came home, laugh at how he would forget how to walk if he didn’t look down from time to time.  And then Elfangor would sit beside him, pointing to distant suns and telling stories.  He pointed to Earth’s sun, once, or the vague approximation of the right heading, and had said that one day the Andalites would ally themselves with the people there, or so he hoped.  Ax had been so proud of him, so delighted that his brother was willing to sit and talk to him, even if it made Elfangor strange—his friends all drifted away, and the handful of others who made passing flirtations were firmly turned away.  Elfangor always told Ax that he didn’t need more family, he had enough to be going on with. 

Elfangor had already been to Earth and gone again, by then, and had more family than Ax had imagined.  Ax has managed to figure out where, roughly, his brother’s erased timeline had fit into the reconstructed one, and he wonders if Elfangor would be glad that Ax has found Tobias.  Or perhaps Elfangor would be bitter, or perhaps some combination of the two. 

Ax wishes—often—that he could talk to Elfangor again, walk on the grass and hear his voice and ask for advice.  _Look at these humans_ , Ax would say.  _How did we become like them?  How did we fall to their madness?  How do we make the People more like this, more willful, more passionate?  How did you fall in love here, did you miss this place, did you miss these people, did you rage over being taken from them?  How did you survive losing this?_

Maybe Elfangor would answer.  Maybe he would laugh at Ax again, tell him that he’s not any less of a dreamer because he’s asking philosophical questions rather than ones about stars.  Ax doesn’t think he cares one way or another.

He pictures these conversations on green grass rather than blue, under oak and maple leaves rather than plural moons.  He doesn’t really know how to deal with that.

<Ax, are you all right?> a voice asks, and Ax blinks.  It’s dark, and he’s usually asleep by now, but tonight he stands at the edge of the lake, eyes lifted upward to the clear, starred sky above.  A shadow crosses his vision and Tobias lands on a low-hanging branch beside him.  <You’re usually out like a light by now.>

Ax nods, absentminded, a gesture he has picked up from his friends.  <I am thinking.>

<About what?>

Ax points up at the sky, finds the light the humans call Polaris, and his finger tracks down and left, to what seems like an empty patch of sky.  <If you traveled that way for long enough, you would find our shipyards—the Andalites.  I’ve never been there, my year of _arisths_ was due to visit just after I would have returned from accompanying the _GalaxyTree_.  But my brother used to tell me a story about how his class hid a dye sample in the water reserves and turned half the engineers purple.  I asked him to tell me every time he came home to visit. >

Tobias gives a small _huh_ of surprise and remarks,  <I wouldn’t have guessed that he was a trouble maker.>  Tobias says the words in a carefully casual tone, determined to sound offhand, the way he always does when the delicate subject of Elfangor comes up.  Ax lets him, and doesn’t press—Andalites cherish family bonds, the relic of their old herd instincts, and he can’t imagine what it would be like to have never known his parents, to have been raised by people who simply…didn’t care.  If Tobias asked, Ax would tell him anything, everything, whatever it would require to take away the tone of resigned confusion that shows in his thought speech when they talk about family.

Tobias doesn’t ask, as he has _not asked_ every time, and so instead Ax says dryly,  <I believe the polite word, once he was a war hero, was _eccentric_. >

<Maybe they’ll call you eccentric, when you get home,> Tobias says, and Ax laughs outright.

<If I end up being welcomed back to the Andalite home world without being tried for treason, my people will be busy trying to figure out how to deal with humanity.  They probably wouldn’t think either of us eccentric by comparison.>

<Oh, come on, we’re not that bad.>

Ax scoffs.  <Humans are insane.  Half of your planet is trying to kill you at any given time and you respond by sending _more_ people to the most dangerous areas. >

<Well,> Tobias says.  <I’m sure plenty of other species do too.>

<No, most rational species have the common decency to evolve on a planet conducive to their survival.  To say nothing of your attempts at space travel.  Who solves the question of space flight by simply strapping explosives to a ship and lighting them?>

<Listen, we’re doing our best,> Tobias defends, mock offended. 

<Yes,> Ax says, still looking up at the sky.  <You are.  Perhaps Andalites might have achieved space travel more quickly if we were so reckless.  I can only imagine your response to the planets we’ve deemed uninhabitable.>

<Rachel would say that sounds like a challenge.>  Ax laughs at that, and Tobias joins in, amused.  <You like us, though,> Tobias says cheerfully.  <We’ve grown on you.>

<Yes,> Ax agrees.  He thinks of Elfangor, showing his little brother the stars rather than finding friends or a partner, and of the Yeerks who want peace with their hosts, and of the Hork-Bajir hidden away in a valley, and of even the Ellimist and his fondness for this little blue bauble of a planet.  Humanity is a virus, Ax decides, invisible until it has rewritten the genetic code, scrawled its own thoughts and designs over what was there before, and lingering in the blood only to burst to brilliant life years later.  He hopes they live through this war, hopes he gets to see the human race infect the galaxy, spread across planets and star systems and bring their delicious food and their strange enjoyments and their…eccentricities with them. 

<Yes,> he repeats.  <You have.>

**Author's Note:**

> I very firmly headcanon this to be Ax's stance about humanity and some day I will write a pre-series fic about Elfangor and Ax on the Andalite home world and the fact that Elfangor is considered Extremely Hot Stuff by Andalite standards and is therefore also considered Profoundly Weird for ignoring the ongoing attempts to hit on him in favor of hanging with his baby brother.
> 
> Also, I'll populate the entire Internet with fic about Ax and Tobias and the eternal unceasing Presence that is Elfangor's memory (and lack of memory, in Tobias' case) all by my damn self if I have to.


End file.
